Widescreens On Handhelds

[A_SN]

I am a huge advocate of a 4-5" 640x480 screen. 4:3 all the way. I have my pc plugged into my 1366x768 lcd htdv. There is very little gaming advantage to it. an xbox 360 would be a different story (please santa!!!!). But gp2x is kind of a handheld pc-type experience. Also, I would guess that lots of you folks watch anime on your gp2x. 4:3 mostly.

yup definitely 4:3. 320x240 is adequate, but 640x480 would be pretty word if possible.

The only problem I can see with the VGA res is cost. But if they wait awhile to release anything costs should come down. Pocket PCs use both 320 x 240 and 640 x 480 screens so there should be volume there.

Along with the fact that 640 x 480 is a good multiple to do even doubling of older systems without the fractional scaling is the fact that alot of PC stuff could run full resolution on it. Alot of those PC "sim" games use 640 x 480. High res mode on the Amiga and Atari ST was 640 x 400 too. I can see alot of benifits for 640 x 480. I would pay extra for that over the non standard 480 x 272 res.

Hallelujah. Next stop 640x480, and then other standard PC resolutions.

 

[LordFu]

My $.02

16:9 widescreen sucks. 16:10 is the future.

I've got 19" 16:10 widescreens on both of my computers, and they are awesome for gaming and productivity.

 

[Alex.]

What about battery life? Taking just the screen, you have four times as many pixels to manipulate, as well as a fairly larger area to cover with a back light. Then comes the processor, which will surely be a beefier one than the GP2X's, and what this whole thing boils down to is battery life. Say goodbye to your beloved AAs, if you'd rather have pin-point pixels that no one will be able to see anyway...

- Alex

 

[DaveC]

640 * 480 for my two peneth.

And if u can assemble it all into a clamshell design with a built in keyboard ( like a psion 5mx) and make the screen swivel like a sharp zaurus then nobody would need a laptop then would they.

No clamshell. Parts to wear and break and it makes vertically oriented games such as the ones in MAME unplayable that way.

 

[Tobriand]

How about a completely different technology? Print some colour digital paper on a rubber sheet, and suddenly scaling isn't an issue, at least until the rubber perishes. Image too small? Fiddle with the knobs on the side to litterally let you stretch it!

Of course, the type of rubber would be quite important...

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

How about a completely different technology? Print some colour digital paper on a rubber sheet, and suddenly scaling isn't an issue, at least until the rubber perishes. Image too small? Fiddle with the knobs on the side to litterally let you stretch it!

Of course, the type of rubber would be quite important...

How about utilising Etch A Sketch technology :lol:

 

[ThorC]

I think my vote would definitely be for 640x480 and definitely not widescreen. If you want more space, increase the resolution. I have a pocket PC with 640x480 resolution and it is great and I wouldn't trade it. Word processing, internet browsing, word processing, games and remote control of my home PC and such is surprisingly perfect (although with Pocket IE adapting things slightly to fit better).

Between watching movies and television programs on widescreen and a normal 4:3 screen, I have to admit that I lose nothing, maybe it's because I'm old and used to a 4:3 screen, but I actually prefer it, and I have no problem at all watching movies/videos on my gp2x, although that is not my main activity, but something nice from time to time.

However, with widescreen you end up with a longer device, you end up with what I feel is a more uncomfortable to look at display spread out more awkwardly, and end up having either nasty stretching or nasty black borders (and a waste of space) for the majority of things.

Therefore, for me at least, there is no advantage from widescreen at all, only disadvantage. Most ports, games, emulators, non-movie TV shows (and even movies look fine) look great on a 4:3. More resolution would be nice, I'd ideally like 640x480, provided there is easy scaling-up so 320x240->640x480 works well.

 

[DaveC]

I think my vote would definitely be for 640x480 and definitely not widescreen. If you want more space, increase the resolution. I have a pocket PC with 640x480 resolution and it is great and I wouldn't trade it. Word processing, internet browsing, word processing, games and remote control of my home PC and such is surprisingly perfect (although with Pocket IE adapting things slightly to fit better).

Between watching movies and television programs on widescreen and a normal 4:3 screen, I have to admit that I lose nothing, maybe it's because I'm old and used to a 4:3 screen, but I actually prefer it, and I have no problem at all watching movies/videos on my gp2x, although that is not my main activity, but something nice from time to time.

However, with widescreen you end up with a longer device, you end up with what I feel is a more uncomfortable to look at display spread out more awkwardly, and end up having either nasty stretching or nasty black borders (and a waste of space) for the majority of things.

Therefore, for me at least, there is no advantage from widescreen at all, only disadvantage. Most ports, games, emulators, non-movie TV shows (and even movies look fine) look great on a 4:3. More resolution would be nice, I'd ideally like 640x480, provided there is easy scaling-up so 320x240->640x480 works well.

I though the same way. 480 x 272 is too high res for emus basically forcing you to do fractional scaling which looks like shit. 1:1 is very small on a 4" widescreen. I tried 1:1 emus on the PSP 4.3" widescreen and it was like holding a brick with a tiny GBA-micro screen, kind of sucked. It is also too low to do PC ports that required 640x480 so no advantage there. It is like this in-between bastard resolution. Just for a few lines of extra text in an e-book reader it seems a very bad tradeoff. It seems already decided unfortunatly, the idiot masses just seem to buy into the gimmick and throw out any logic. They don't care, they just want that long shape at any cost. Even if it means that the thing they will run most on it like emus look worse at least it is more rectangular like their HDTV. That makes it worth it in their minds :rolleyes: Dumb people rule as they in the majority and do the most buying. I guess 640x480 is too expensive even though PPCs have it. In that case just stick with 320x240 at least it won't ruin all emus and PC ports.

 

[Destructo2000]

I think that widescreen on a portable game system is just dumb. The games get distorted and it just doesn't look good. Plus, if you want to watch a widescreen movie on a 4:3 screen, it just chops off the top and bottom. There's nothing wrong with that. I think we should have a chip implanted into our brain to play games on and it will replace what's really in front of us with the image of the game. :lol:

 

[iignotus]

I think I even said it in this topic before. I just want to repeat it over and over, since it's really the greatest option:

4" 640x480 4:3-AR screen.

Who's with me.

 

[DBH]

Apparently it was in the news the other day samsung managed to make a 800x400 2.9" LCD that they intend to use in mobile phone handsets... if they can do that for 2.9" screen just image a decent sized 3.5" screen... 800x600 native res!

 

[TheOwly1]

isnt the point of widescreen to have the screen match more to our range of vision when large? What on earth is the point of having a widescreen on something so small it will never fill enough of your vision?

 

[iignotus]

isnt the point of widescreen to have the screen match more to our range of vision when large? What on earth is the point of having a widescreen on something so small it will never fill enough of your vision?

No matter where your eyes' focal point is located, the field of vision is still considerably wider than it is tall.

 

[DaveC]

isnt the point of widescreen to have the screen match more to our range of vision when large? What on earth is the point of having a widescreen on something so small it will never fill enough of your vision?

No matter where your eyes' focal point is located, the field of vision is still considerably wider than it is tall.

While that may be true, when you are looking at a small 4" rectangle 1.5ft away it doesn't matter what the shape is, I won't fill your field of view. That kind of makes the shape irrelevant in that respect. It then comes down to what you will run most on the system and then finding the aspect/native resolution that matches best with the least amount of distortion. If it will be emus, PC ports then a VGA variation is best like QVGA,VGA, etc. If it is mostly movies then a wider aspect is best. I would assume most of us here run emus, game re-makes, and PC games like Doom etc more on their handheld than they watch feature films on it making the QVGA, VGA the logical choice. Watching movies on a 4" screen is not exactly "cinematic" anyway. For some reason movies scale better then games, probably since they have been converted and compressed so many times.

 

[devestation]

My opinion is only use a wide screen resolution if it can be made so that if you want to use a 4:3 aspect ratio, then the image displayed will be the exact same size as the current gp2x image with just black bars on the sides. This would satisfy all parties, I would think.

However, getting an LCD screen with a size and resolution that would do what I said may be an expensive chore, so if the device cannot use that type of widescreen, I say 4:3 no question. 480*272 would suck all around.

BTW, I do not think 16:10 would be good for anything on a handheld. You would still probably have an odd resolution for emulators, and then you would have an added problem of movies having to be stretched or cropped too.

 

[Goity]

16:12 ftw

 

[NoidZ]

I hate bars on the sides, though I really like bars on the top and bottom.. Looks fresh/modern or something.

 

[DaveC]

My opinion is only use a wide screen resolution if it can be made so that if you want to use a 4:3 aspect ratio, then the image displayed will be the exact same size as the current gp2x image with just black bars on the sides. This would satisfy all parties, I would think.

However, getting an LCD screen with a size and resolution that would do what I said may be an expensive chore, so if the device cannot use that type of widescreen, I say 4:3 no question. 480*272 would suck all around.

BTW, I do not think 16:10 would be good for anything on a handheld. You would still probably have an odd resolution for emulators, and then you would have an added problem of movies having to be stretched or cropped too.

Yeah just for information the image below shows the size comparison between the current GP2X screen size and the popular 4" 480 x 272 widescreen that is used on movie players etc (the PSP is slightly larger at 4.3"). It is only for size comparison, not the image quality. Megadrive is 320 x 220. You can see at 1:1 on the Gp2X screen there are only small bars on top and bottom. I then cut out the images so you can see the relative sizes. As you can see the 4" 480 x 272 has a huge border and a tiny image in comparison. Even if you stretch the image but maintain aspect on the 4" 480x272 the image is about the same size, but alot uglier. All emulator images would need fractional stretching on the 16:9 screen to get to the size of the GP2X 4:3 screen at 1:1.

The 480 x 272 res is an odball for sure, thanks to Sony. It is too high to display emus or QVGA PC stuff (Descent etc.) without alot of molestation of the image, but still too low for 640x480 PC stuff like open TTD.

 

[Destructo2000]

Thanks for those size comparisons. And that brings up exactly why I hate emulation on widescreens. I absolutely cannot stand that stupid gigantic border around the image. Whenever I use an emulator that does that by default, with the exeption of SquidgeSNES (the border goes well with it) I always set it to fullscreen.

 

[DaveC]

Thanks for those size comparisons. And that brings up exactly why I hate emulation on widescreens. I absolutely cannot stand that stupid gigantic border around the image. Whenever I use an emulator that does that by default, with the exeption of SquidgeSNES (the border goes well with it) I always set it to fullscreen.

You can set to fullscreen but then you get those ugly pixillated artifacts. There really is no good solution for that. You have to pick what you hate the least, ugly pixel distortions or small image size and big borders. To me they both suck, which is why I don't like emulation on small widescreens.